Moments
by wolfblood16
Summary: It only takes a moment for everything to change completely. MSR


**You just have to believe in yourself when you've got something, and just keep pounding on the door, because if you pound long enough, somebody is going to open it.**

**-Cynthia Weil**

He'd put her through hell.

He knew that she'd been injured so many times because of him.

As Special Agent Fox Mulder cradled his partner's head in his hands, all the guilt he'd felt for years seemed to double.

Dana Scully was dying in his arms.

_Moments before, they had entered the parking garage cautiously, guns raised. Whatever or whoever they had been chasing had disappeared, probably hidden behind a car or a cement post, waiting. Naturally, he had been the one to suggest they split up to cover more ground. She'd glanced at him, wearily. 'We don't even have a clue what this is, Mulder,' she had reminded him. He'd simple shrugged. It didn't matter. Nothing much did._

"Mulder," Scully whispered hoarsely. "Please don't blame yourself. Please. Its not your fault."

He knew better.

"I'll be fine," she continued, lifting a hand slowly to wipe away his tears.

_Moments after he'd walked away from her, he had spotted the thing. It looked human. It gave him a regular, human grin. But its eyes...there was always something about the eyes. The humanoid dashed around the car before he could spit out the words that had become instinct. Still, they flew from his mouth._

_'F.B.I.! Don't move!'_

"I'm a big girl," she assured him with a weak smile. "My feet may not be able to reach the pedals, but I'm a big girl." Mulder allowed himself to laugh at her joke, but it quickly turned into a choked sob. Memories were too painful at the moment.

"I'm so tired," she whined, something she'd rarely done around him. "Don't go to sleep," Mulder warned, but her eyes fluttered shut. "Don't go to sleep," he repeated, but this time it was more pleading than warning.

_Moments passed as Mulder pursued the thing. It was fast and he was beginning to lose the feeling of his feet in his shoes as they thudded against the cold concrete. Left turn passed a blue Camaro, right turn passed a cement post...a wall! The humanoid had run straight towards a corner of the room. There was Scully, running towards the humanoid from the other direction. __Mulder couldn't help the grin that crept onto his face. 'Thought I told you not to move,' Mulder panted as the creature realized it had trapped itself. It seemed to study him for a moment. Its gaze caused the hairs to stand up on the back of Mulder's neck._

_It was reading him._

_Silently, the humanoid grinned again and raised an odd gun. Scully yelled for it to stay still, but the thing pointed the gun at her all the same. Its gaze was locked with Mulder's, daring the agent to shoot._

_Bang!_

"But I'm so tired," Scully persisted. He repositioned her on his lap. "Listen to me, Scully. Your body is going into shock. Don't you remember that?" Mulder asked. Her brow creased.

"Remember what?" she asked.

It seemed like yesterday to him.

_Moments before they had met for the first time, Mulder sat in the basement of the F.B.I. building, studying slides of the Swenson case. Suddenly, there came a knock at his door._

_'Sorry, nobody down here but the F.B.I.'s most unwanted,' he'd told whoever it was, not bothering to turn away from his work. The door had been pushed open while he spoke, and he turned around after a few moments. A petite woman stood before him. She wore a trim suit, a perfect example of all that is prim and proper. From the tip of her black shoes to the top of her red-haired head, she looked like one of those people that bothered him to no end._

_'Agent Mulder,' she'd greeted him in the short way he'd grown to love. 'I'm Dana Scully. I've been assigned to work with you.' He shook her hand as she spoke. 'Oh, isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded?' He sneered. 'So who did you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?' His attitude didn't seem to affect her. 'Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you,' she informed him matter-of-factly._

_He hadn't believe a word._

_'Oh really? I was under the impression...' he paused to grin. 'That you were sent to spy on me.'_

_'If you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials, th-'_

_'You're a medical doctor,' he said, standing and walking over to another section of his cluttered desk. 'You teach at the academy. You did your undergraduate degree in physics.' He scanned the paper he'd pulled from beneath his telephone. ''Einstein's Twin Paradox, A New Interpretation. Dana Scully Senior Thesis.' Now thats a credential, rewriting Einstein.'_

It took her a while, but Scully's eyes lit up as she realized he was right. She was a doctor. She knew that her body was going into shock from the injury and blood loss.

Then why was everything she knew so fuzzy? Maybe there was something in the bullet that the creature had shot her with. Maybe it erased memory completely. If that was to be so, she had to say one thing before she forgot it.

"Mulder?"

The man winced. She had never sounded so weak. Even during her cancer, she had been strong and had never given up.

That was when he had truly fallen in love with her. She never gave up, even though the news had been the worst.

"Fox?"

Mulder blinked. Had she really just called him by his first name?

"Yes Dana?" he asked, following suit.

"There are certain things that I've wanted to say.." she paused. Her breathing was becoming strained now. He could tell. "But never got around to saying them. I guess now is as good a time as ever. Mulder I-"

He pressed a finger to her lips, then brushed her bangs out of her eyes. "I know. You don't have to say it. I feel the same," he whispered as hot tears began to fall from his eyes again. Neither had to say that they loved each other. They had known for years.

He pulled her closer, unsure what else he could do to help with the wounds. He knew they didn't look as bad as they were. He knew there was internal damage. He knew Scully couldn't wait much longer if she was going to survive.

_Moments after she had been shot, the first word Scully was able to create had been his name as she stumbled back. All three of them had shot almost simultaneously, but immediately Mulder knew that he should have lodged a bullet in the creature before the thing had a chance to threaten his Scully._

_His Scully, he'd repeated to himself as he rushed over to her. She'd kneeled on the floor, clutching her stomach. The humanoid had also been wounded, quickly sinking to become bubbling green goop, but Fox Mulder had other things on his mind._

_Her mouth hung agape as her gaze took in his shiny black shoes, then his slacks, then up to his jacket and pristine white shirt and odd tie. After a long moment, their gazes locked and she slid even farther down to the floor. Mudler had stooped and pulled her hands away from the wound. He'd cursed up a storm as he reached into his pocket for his phone._

_'This is Agent Mulder. We have an officer down.'_

She closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest. "Is this the end?" She asked after a long silence.

"I don't know," Mulder admitted, but his answer was never heard, for an ambulance and several police cars had finally arrived, sirens blaring.


End file.
